


Strange Fits of Passion

by fountainpens



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Fluff, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 22:34:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18787606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fountainpens/pseuds/fountainpens
Summary: "I’d been, I’d been feeling rather low, and I knew that if there was one face in the world I’d be delighted to see, it was yours. And then there you were!"Miss Lister surprises Miss Walker in the Lake District. (Occurs between Episode 2 and 3 of Gentleman Jack's first season.)





	Strange Fits of Passion

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of an exploration into Ann Walker's mind and especially her issues with (at least what seems to me) depression or melancholy. It's more of a sketch than anything, and I'm only posting it because I love this show and wanted to explore it with others a bit. This is unbeta'd and pretty rough, so please excuse any grammar/content issues. :)

Ann Walker reclined on a slope of thin, but soft grass. Her sketchbook’s pages fluttered in the wind, as she looked out across the valley. She’d already drawn a rough outline of the spot, but the thought of filling those outlines with watercolor suddenly failed to interest her. Her mood rested heavy again; she’d felt it coming on over the past couple days and had managed to stave it off, for Catherine’s sake. Now in solitude, however, she sighed heavily and let her mind linger in those deep waters for a moment.

 

Doctors called it a weakness in her spine and her family whispered, she knew, of perhaps an extreme feminine delicacy, but both explanations always seemed terribly inadequate to describe these waves that crested over her spirit at times. It felt as if some midnight prowler stalked beneath her bedroom windows, never breaking in, never stealing something real or causing an actual pain. He just paced below. Her spirit could hear the footfalls and only shudder in response.

 

She could not explain this to the doctors.

 

In her reverie, her eyes alighted on one of Miss Lister’s books lying near her. Miss Lister had been urging her for weeks now to read some natural histories, but she could never get past more than a few chapters. She’d need Miss Lister’s voice, her passion, to make fossils and rocks and other old, decaying things come alive to her. So instead, she clung to the one book Miss Lister seemed hesitant to lend her.

 

_“It won’t be of much good_ use _to you as these others here that can tell you how those vistas and landscapes came to be, who sat on those rises and falls before you, or what roamed these lands first. But well, he’s perhaps done more for the Lake District in the past half a century than many who preceded him.”_

 

And she passed her a volume of the _Lyrical Ballads_ , which Ann pulled towards herself again now and flipped through its pages, finding those verses that brought her friend to mind.

 

“She dwelt among the untrodden ways,” Ann read softly aloud to herself, “Beside the springs of Dove, a Maid who there were none to praise and very few to love.”

 

She ran her thumb along the page’s edge and continued reading in silence, letting the cool breeze and the melancholy verse soothe her. Funny how a poem to match her mood did more for her than all of Catherine’s misguided attempts at lifting her spirits. None of them understood. For such a long time, she thought no one would, but then Miss Lister began visiting her. And like ten years ago, when somehow she had been the only person to make her smile after her mother’s death, Miss Lister made her smile again, lifting the veil between Ann and the world. If there really were a prowler beneath her window, she imagined Miss Lister would whip him for trespassing.

 

She finished Wordsworth’s poem and sat up to rethink her sketch again. Perhaps she could add something that wasn’t right before her eyes. She compared nature to her representation once more and thought of adding a path, one that might lead towards another spot, another lake, or some face that would cheer her.

 

“Imagine my surprise,” a clear, sonorous voice called from behind her and her heart leapt immediately, “when I was told my friend Miss Walker was, in fact, in the one place in the Lake District without a lake.”

 

Ann turned around fully and there she was, strutting down towards her with her head uncovered, some of the curls around her face undone, and a traveling coat, gray with dust, billowing behind her.

 

In a moment, Miss Lister stood above her and, after tugging off a leather glove, reached one hand down. Ann grasped it immediately, but was not prepared to be hauled up and placed on her feet. As usual, Miss Lister came nearer to her than most people found, strictly speaking, polite, but after weeks away, Ann relished the proximity and felt herself smile for the first time in days. Miss Lister’s bright eyes shone, and she kept Ann’s fingers grasped lightly in her own.

 

“Who is your guide?” Miss Lister said, in a somewhat softer, but no less deep voice than the one she’d used in her surprise entrance. “He must be spoken to because this is simply ridiculous.”

 

“A cousin recommended that we take this route.”

 

“Ah I see,” Miss Lister interrupted. “Excuse me, but I’d have to tell you that most of the people in your family cannot be trusted to decide upon things that require actual taste, from forests to frills. You, on the other hand, look quite lovely today. I like these.”

 

Miss Lister released one hand to lightly touch the flowers Ann had placed in her hair during her walk that morning. She wanted to freshen her look, to come alive like the nature surrounding her, so she thought that adorning herself with it might help the process. She was pleased that Miss Lister approved her efforts.

 

“But Miss Lister, have you come from London? How did you find us?” Her heart beat wildly, and she was surprised at the lack of a stutter in her words.

 

Miss Lister seemed about to answer, but then something stopped her and she bent a little closer to Ann to speak quietly.

 

“‘Miss Lister?’ Have we been apart so long that we’ve reverted again to formalities?”

 

“Anne,” she replied immediately, on an exhalation of breath. And with that breath, she felt as if a cloud had receded. She grasped Anne’s slim fingers tightly in her own and smiled again, which seemed to do the trick because Anne began speaking in her usual quick, impassioned clip.

 

“Yes, straight from London. I might’ve arrived sooner if preparations for my departure hadn’t taken so long. I don’t understand how servants always seem surprised when asked to prepare for a journey. As if they must newly acquire the skill each time I ask for my bags to be packed, a carriage to be brought, and farewells to be made. Somehow, we made it out of the city after an age, and I flew here on the lightest horses I could find.”

 

As she spoke of her fast travel, Ann noticed again the dust on her coat and how some even dashed her cheek and chin, marring the corner of her lips.

 

“Did you drive it?”

 

“No, not this time. But I sat up top. I can’t abide being cooped up inside.”

 

Ann remembered the nauseous feeling that often overcame her in a carriage and how that had only gone to an extreme when her carriage almost tipped over that fateful day above Shibden.

 

She nodded in response to Anne’s answer and kept gazing at her, still so pleased to have her here, but Anne must’ve taken it amiss because her brow furrowed slightly and she looked down.

 

“I’m sure I look a fright. All this travel. When I arrived at your lodgings, I had every intention of putting myself to rights, but then James told me you were out here and…”

 

Her voice trailed off, and she made that deep humming noise, which Ann had already begun to associate with nerves or hesitance or some combination of both. Before she could stop herself or think better of it, Ann reached up to her friend’s face and combed the stray, dark hairs back into her curls and behind her ears. She heard Anne gasp softly and exhale in a shudder. With the tips of her fingers, she then dusted Anne’s cheek softly but hesitated before touching her lips. She remembered again—for she replayed that afternoon in her mind almost incessantly—how Anne wanted to kiss her. She still did not know what to do with that knowledge or how to act, but she nevertheless felt herself moving towards something. But now, she merely looked at her friend’s lips and spoke.

 

“You look perfect. I’m so happy to see you.”

 

Anne smiled and pulled her in closer if that were even possible.

 

“You were right.”

 

“About what?” Ann asked.

 

“The thing that was complicated. It...sorted itself out. I’m glad I went.”

 

Ann had wondered what was so complicated about a friend’s wedding. She puzzled over it during long carriage rides with Catherine prattling. She kept alighting on the guarded expression that overcame Anne’s features that day and still, even as she said things had worked themselves out, marred her features slightly, pinching her lips and the corners of her eyes with a small pain.

 

She wished she could take this pain from her friend and wondered if she’d ever have that power over this exceptional woman, especially when Ann herself often felt inept at battling her own demons.

 

“I had to come find you,” Anne said, breaking her reveries, “So I could thank you properly for your kind advice.”

 

Anne reached up and placed her hand against her neck, rubbing her cheek softly with her thumb. This was a favorite gesture of hers, and Ann learned to expect and even luxuriate in the touch. Today, perhaps because of the long absence, she closer her eyes and turned her cheek further into her friend’s palm. Again, she heard Anne’s soft gasp and opened her eyes to a raised brow and slackened jaw. Anne moved closer, almost imperceptibly.

 

“Ann!” Catherine’s cry seemed to reverberate across the valley.

 

Both women jumped apart and turned to look at the inquiring voice. Anne Lister grimaced when she noted who had interrupted them.

 

“I assume you’re the Ann who is wanted.”

 

Ann drifted from Miss Lister’s side and from the moment that was now irrevocably lost. She had always loved Catherine, but as of late she’d acquired the worst sense of timing—and a few unfavorable opinions. While Catherine inquired as to when she planned on returning for tea, Ann felt Miss Lister moving about behind her and, with a sidelong glance she ascertained, retrieving her sketching pad and book.

 

With a few assurances of her immediate return, Catherine finally returned from where she came, but not without frequent turns back to ensure that Ann and Miss Lister followed.

 

Anne sidled up next to her as they began to walk together.

 

“Here,” Ann said, reaching towards the books. “I can take them.” But Anne merely batted her hands away. She held both books tightly in the gloved hand closest Ann.

 

“Will you show me what you’ve painted so far on your journey?”

 

“Of course,” Ann replied. “Perhaps after tea, we could steal away for a moment.”

 

“That sounds like a plan.”

 

Anne nodded as if making a deal. She kept her pace relatively slow, perhaps to lengthen their time alone before returning to the house, but even then Ann struggled to keep up with her friend’s long strides. So she reached out and grasped onto the crook of Anne’s arm. At her touch, Anne slowed a bit.

 

She looked down at Ann’s hand almost as if it were a grasshopper alighting on her sleeve. Her expression was curious but happy, and she tightened her arm against her body, drawing Ann closer in the process.

 

Ann felt the grit of travel upon Anne Lister’s coat and rubbed the dust against her fingertips. She had sped from London for her, to thank her, to see her. Ann Walker’s chest swelled with pride at the thought. Perhaps she did have some power.

 

“How are you liking the poems?” Anne asked, raising the book slightly but careful to keep Ann’s hand close.

 

“Very much,” Ann replied. “I was reading one about a woman, when you arrived. ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways.’”

 

Ann ran her thumb against the dark coat sleeve and pressed until she thought she could feel the strength of Anne’s upper arm beneath her hand. Anne hummed in acknowledgement.

 

“I prefer the other one about that same woman. ‘Strange fits of passion have I known.’”

 

Anne looked down at her hand again, then slowly traced up her arm to her lips. She lingered there for a moment and finally gazed directly down into her eyes. Anne smiled softly at her, but her eyes shone a newly revealed depth.

 

Like a brake upon a carriage wheel, Ann’s hand reined her friend in an inch more and slowed their pace to a stroll.


End file.
